How the U.S. Army got woke under Obama

 This was published just over ten years ago. It's still up there, for all the world to see. 

Female Rangers Were Given Special Treatment, Sources Say

Women were given special treatment before and during Ranger School to ensure at least one would graduate, sources say.

By Susan Katz Keating, a stringer at PEOPLE. She has written about major crime, along with military topics, for more than two decades.

 

Published on September 25, 2015 09:30AM EDT

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Way back in January, long before the first women attended the Army’s elite Ranger School – one of the most grueling military courses in the world – officials at the highest levels of the Army had already decided failure was not an option, sources tell PEOPLE.

“A woman will graduate Ranger School,” a general told shocked subordinates this year while preparing for the first females to attend a “gender integrated assessment” of the grueling combat leadership course starting April 20, sources tell PEOPLE. “At least one will get through.”

That directive set the tone for what was to follow, sources say.

“It had a ripple effect” at Fort Benning, where Ranger School is based, says a source with knowledge of events at the sprawling Georgia Army post. “Even though this was supposed to be just an assessment, everyone knew. The results were planned in advance.”

On Tuesday, PEOPLE revealed that Oklahoma Republican Rep. Steve Russell had asked the Department of Defense for documents about the women who attended Ranger School after becoming concerned that “the women got special treatment and played by different rules,” sources say.

Ranger School consists of three phases: Benning, which lasts 21 days and includes water survival, land navigation, a 12-mile march, patrols, and an obstacle course; Mountain Phase, which lasts 20 days, and includes assaults, ambushes, mountaineering and patrols; and Swamp Phase, which lasts 17 days and covers waterborne operations.

But whereas men consistently were held to the strict standards outlined in the Ranger School’s Standing Operating Procedures handbook sources say, the women were allowed lighter duties and exceptions to policy.

Multiple sources told PEOPLE:

• Women were first sent to a special two-week training in January to get them ready for the school, which didn’t start until April 20. Once there they were allowed to repeat the program until they passed – while men were held to a strict pass/fail standard.

• Afterward they spent months in a special platoon at Fort Benning getting, among other things, nutritional counseling and full-time training with a Ranger.

• While in the special platoon they were taken out to the land navigation course – a very tough part of the course that is timed – on a regular basis. The men had to see it for the first time when they went to the school.

• Once in the school they were allowed to repeat key parts – like patrols – while special consideration was not given to the men.

• A two-star general made personal appearances to cheer them along during one of the most challenging parts of the school, multiple sources tell PEOPLE.

The end result? Two women – First Lts. Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver – graduated August 21 (along with 381 men) and are wearing the prestigious Ranger Tab. Griest was surprised they made it.

“I thought we were going to be dropped after we failed Darby [part of Benning] the second time,” Griest said at a press conference before graduation. “We were offered a Day One Recycle.”

At their graduation, Maj Gen. Scott Miller, who oversees Ranger School, denied the Army eased its standards or was pressured to ensure at least one woman graduated.

“Standards remain the same, Miller said, according to The Army Times. “The five-mile run is still five miles. The 12-mile march is still 12 miles.

“There was no pressure from anyone above me to change standards,” said Miller, who declined to speak to PEOPLE.

Instructors say otherwise.

“We were under huge pressure to comply,” one Ranger instructor says. “It was very much politicized.”

The women didn’t want or ask for special treatment, says one who attempted the program.

“All of us wanted the same standards for males and females,” Billi Blaschke, who badly injured her ankle only six days into a required pre-assessment program, tells PEOPLE. “We wanted to do it on our own.”

On September 2, the Army announced that Ranger School is now open both to men and women.

Women are not currently allowed to perform Ranger duties, even Lts. Griest and Haver who passed the course. However, the Army will be forced to open Ranger positions to females on January 1, unless the Secretary of Defense grants an exception.

If the exemption isn’t granted, the Army may send women into combat – which is why so many former and current Rangers are concerned about women being held to the same standards as men.

“Combat is brutal and unforgiving,” says Jim Lechner, a retired Army officer and Ranger who was wounded in combat in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the famed “Black Hawk Down” incident. “Fighters must be prepared and capable. If they are not, people will die.”

Ranger School teaches students how to overcome fatigue, hunger and stress to lead soldiers in small-unit combat operations.

“I remain unconvinced that the recent graduation of two female soldiers was a proper test of females’ ability to perform in combat,” Lechner tells PEOPLE.

While Griest and Haver could not be reached for comment, the Army insists the two women who graduated August 21 did so under their own steam.

“In order to successfully graduate Ranger School, all students, male and female, are required to meet all course standards,” Army spokesman LTC Jennifer Johnson tells PEOPLE.

“The course standards for Ranger Class 08-15 are the exact same standards that have been used for all other Ranger classes,” she says.

Claims of Special Treatment

The women got special treatment from the start, sources tell PEOPLE.

Though the course didn’t begin until April 20, the first female Ranger candidates arrived at Fort Benning in January to attend the National Guard’s rigorous Ranger Training and Assessment Course (RTAC), a two-week program designed to assess whether a student could attempt the 62-day Ranger School.

Previously, only the National Guard’s Ranger hopefuls were required to attend RTAC, while non-Guard candidates had the elective option to attend. Now, all females – no matter whether they were Guard, Reserve or Regular Army – were required to attend.

There they were given another edge, sources say: While men were held to a stark pass-fail standard, women were allowed to redo the special training repeatedly.

“That was the first special concession,” says an Army source with knowledge of what transpired. “Males do not recycle RTAC. They either cut it or not.”

Neither Gen. Miller nor Fort Benning responded to questions asking about allegations of altered standards.

Approximately 140 women went through various cycles of the 14-day long RTAC. Many left of their own volition. Others dropped out, sources say.

By the end of January, many were slated to begin Ranger school.

Then came the second round of special treatment, sources tell PEOPLE.

The males proceeded to Ranger School without further ado. The women got special training. They were placed into their own platoon and spent the next several weeks preparing for Ranger School, sources say.

They were given nutritional counseling and a soldier to train them full time. The soldier, Sergeant First Class Robert Hoffnagle, previously had competed in Fort Benning’s annual Best Ranger competition, touted as the “ultimate test of fitness, endurance and grit for the Army’s most elite soldiers.

The women “lived and breathed nothing but Ranger School 24/7,” a source tells PEOPLE. “He taught [them] everything, including how to do patrols.”

There they were also allowed to train and rehearse on Land Navigation.

“That right there was a special consideration that only was given to the women,” says a source with knowledge of events. “It’s not fair, on a lot of levels.”

In a response to questions that included a request for confirmation that the women were placed in the special platoon, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ben Garrett said “the allegations are not true.”

However, other sources confirmed its existence to PEOPLE.

“Hoffnagle got us ready for Ranger School,” says a woman who attended the special platoon.

And other sources at Fort Benning tell PEOPLE they were present at meetings to discuss the platoon’s budget and how it would operate.

By April 20, 19 women and 381 men reported for Ranger School.

Within days, 11 women were dropped from the course because they failed either the physical training, land navigation, or road march portions, sources say.

“They were decimated on road march,” an instructor tells PEOPLE.

On May 7, less than three weeks into the course, a highly placed Army source told PEOPLE that no women remained in Ranger School.

Then something changed.

“The women were called in to see the general,” said the source, referencing Miller, who oversees Ranger School.

“He told them they could not quit – too much time and money had been devoted to bringing them here,” the source said.

Miller himself acknowledged he’d met with the women in a statement to The Washington Post, though he did not say what he told them, just that he was “impressed” that they wanted to continue, according to the newspaper.

On May 8, eight women were allowed to repeat the first phase.

Once again, the women failed, sources said. They stumbled on patrols.

“They were not aggressive enough,” a source with knowledge of events tells PEOPLE. “They made poor combat decisions.”

Patrols are a crucial element in Ranger School.

“If you fail patrols, it’s significant, because you don’t have what it takes,” says Bubba Moore, a former Ranger Instructor with close ties to the Ranger and Fort Benning communities. “People will get killed.”

In late May, with more failed events, commanders reassessed what to do with the women. Five women were sent back to their home units. Three were offered the chance to start Ranger School all over again, from the first day. They accepted the offer.

The three women again failed patrols during the first phase, sources say.

That’s when Gen. Miller himself arrived on the course, according to sources.

Fort Benning later acknowledged to PEOPLE that Miller had gone to the training grounds while the women were on the course. A Fort Benning spokesman said Miller went there to commemorate his 30th anniversary of attending Ranger School, and did not go to pressure instructors into passing the women.

Nevertheless, with Miller on scene, the women passed and progressed to the next phase.

“Was it undue command influence?” a source with knowledge of events tells PEOPLE. “No matter what the general intended to convey, the instructors had no choice but to take this to mean, ‘Play along.’ ”

“The instructors knew what they were expected to do,” the source says. “They did it.”

After the women continue to struggle, Miller showed up again, sources say. Two women passed and ultimately graduated on August 21.

Meanwhile, one woman from that same class, who has redone other phases repeatedly, just failed the Swamp Phase and is going to try it again, sources say.

Another group of women is set to begin Ranger School in November.

Late on the evening of Sept. 25, the Army released a statement from Brig. Gen. Malcom B. Frost, who is chief of the Army’s public affairs office, about the PEOPLE story and the allegations uncovered by PEOPLE reporter Susan Keating.

[Ms. Keating] claimed that women were allowed to repeat a Ranger training class until they passed, while men were held to a strict pass/fail standard,” the statement said. “That is false.

“She charged that women regularly practiced on Ranger School’s land navigation course while men saw it for the first time when they went to the school,” the statement said. “Again, false.

“She accused an Army general of calling female candidates together to tell them they could not quit the course. Yet again, false.

 

https://people.com/celebrity/female-rangers-were-given-special-treatment-sources-say/ 

Like the soul of the tyrant himself, Trump's administration is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, including on immigration enforcement, reversing last week's pause on deportations

 All his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.                       

-- Plato, Republic 

Story. 

Normally you institute protectionist policies like tariffs when you already have something to protect, not before

But our Orwellian Republicans put the cart before the horse.

You can't return to something which no longer exists. The net trade deficit for 2024 is nearly $1 trillion, instead of flat like during the post-war up until Reagan, who first ran in 1976 against Ford, when tariffs still had something to protect but we listened to the siren song of free-trade instead.

That is why the Trump administration has had to cast about for at least six different reasons for instituting tariffs at the present time, none of which are at all convincing otherwise there wouldn't be six of them, not to mention that the math used for them is preposterous, or that they are the farthest thing from reciprocal.

The real reason for them, however, is that the tariffs, like the executive orders which now number over 100, are the immediate strings available to our Puppet Master, which he can pull this way one day and that way another, your ever present reminder of who is in charge around here. Suck up to him and he'll make a deal.

Trump's White House laughably brags about these things.

New taxes, which is what these tariffs are, are liberating don't you see!

Our mad King Ludwig needs this constant adulation. The tyrant has desires which he can never fulfill, Plato warned us.

But of course all this can be undone by the next president, which is no way to run a country. It makes for deep institutional instability and distrust throughout the global economy, for which few can reasonably plan.

The message remains the same: Expect Kaos. 

 

Mad King Ludwig flies into a rage all because a judge told him Nay Nay

Ordinarily after successfully pulling off such a deportation coup, which may or may not be legal, you would think Trump would be gloating, but you would be wrong.

Nothing is ever good enough. He is never satisfied. He is never secure.

"He who is the real tyrant," said Plato, "whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind."

 

 

 

"He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

 

Iraq combat vets wondered why National Guard member Pete Hegseth showed up in Iraq in 2005 leading a platoon

 “I showed up in the 101st Airborne Division, in one of the most storied units in our nation’s history, with a bunch of combat vets who’d already done a tour in Iraq and they looked at me like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” Hegseth said in a 2021 interview on “The Will Cain Show” podcast.

One former officer who served with Hegseth said he was surprised to see a National Guard member taking on such a role. He surmised that Hegseth probably wanted to run for office someday and thought a combat tour could help, the former officer said. ...

The former Army officer who served with Hegseth in Iraq said he believes he has latched on to “populist scenarios” in a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth’s potential nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in touch with one another, the former officer said.

One text he received especially stood out. All it said: “WTF?”

More.

Why I won't be patronizing Oppenheimer by seeing it: He was a Stalinist and a traitor

 Daniel J. Flynn, here:

As described in this column previously, Pavel Sudoplatov, so high-ranking that the Soviets placed him in charge of murdering Leon Trotsky, maintained in his autobiography that “Oppenheimer supplied … the Soviet Union with crucial information for it to successfully test its own atomic bomb in 1949.” He details Oppenheimer’s role, “which included allowing moles access to secret data to copy it, and describes him as ‘knowingly part of the scheme.’”

Material from the files of both Soviet and U.S. intelligence supports Sudoplatov’s claim: “An Oct. 2, 1944, memo from the Soviet archives, signed in receipt by chief of secret police Lavrentiy Beria, identifies Oppenheimer as a ‘member of the apparatus of Comrade [Earl] Browder’ who ‘provided cooperation in access to research for several of our tested sources including a relative of [the Communist Party USA leader].’”

Venona project decrypts refer to Oppenheimer under a codename, monikers in most but not all circumstances reserved for Soviet assets. A decoded March 1945 intercept “instructs Soviet agents to ‘re-establish contact with “Veskel” … as soon as possible.’ Veskel, the National Security Administration determined conclusively, referred to Oppenheimer.”

In The Venona Secrets, late authors Herb Romerstein and Eric Breindel wrote: “In May [of 1945] the Rezidentura sent Moscow another report from [Theodore] Hall on atom bomb research. It revealed the locations of work being done and the names of the heads of each research group. All of the names were clearly written out except one, that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was listed as ‘Veskel,’ the head of Los Alamos.”

Oppenheimer’s critics lacked this information in 1954, so one better understands their restrained classification of him as merely a security risk rather than charging that he lacked, in the words of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, a “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” What’s the excuse of the NBC News Studios documentary airing on MSNBC for omitting so much information from credible sources in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intelligence apparatus painting a grim picture of Oppenheimer’s trustworthiness? ...

Oppenheimer donated large sums to Communist causes, subscribed to Communist publications, and married a Communist. Other associates in the party included his brother, sister-in-law, landlady, the girlfriend who later became his mistress, and numerous students. He attended secret meetings of Communist professors while teaching at Berkeley.

 Most damning of all, Haakon Chevalier, a friend and professor at Berkeley, approached Oppenheimer with the idea of passing on Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer did not report this event to his superiors for many months and, when he did, described the events dishonestly, i.e., by omitting both himself and Chevalier from the story. Rather than steer clear of someone petitioning him to commit espionage, Oppenheimer continued to see Chevalier socially for years.

Congress went on a spending orgy since 2019 adding $8.77 trillion to the national debt and dimwits blame the Fed for being unable to control inflation

 Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Blame yourselves. You elected them.

 

The chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule.

-- Plato, Republic, I, 346f.

Trump excels at the adulation, insatiable desires, convulsions and distractions

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

It's always amusing to see what triggers CNBC liberals, in this case a Johnny Reb hat worn by US Senate hopeful Cindy-Hyde Smith

Appearances are everything to liberals, who are our time's cave dwellers of Plato's Republic, who have never seen a reenactment of a War Between The States battle, as I have right here in Yankee Michigan. Yes, we've had full blown Confederate armies here, the state which just witnessed a Democrat sweep of state offices in Election 2018.

A lousy gray hat from yesteryear triggers the headline (the blue Yankee hat goes unremarked):

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith wore Confederate rebel hat in Facebook photo — 'Mississippi history at its best!'

David Frum is not a conservative

Here:

Ideas are not artifacts, especially the kind of collective ideas we know as ideologies. Conservatives in 1964 opposed civil-rights laws. Conservatives in 1974 opposed tax cuts unless paid for by spending cuts. Conservatives in 1984 opposed same-sex marriage. Conservatives in 1994 opposed trade protectionism. Conservatives in 2004 opposed people who equated the FBI and Soviet Union’s KGB. All those statements of conservative ideology have gone by the boards, and one could easily write a similar list of amended views for liberals.

Conservatism is what conservatives think, say, and do. As conservatives change—as much through the harsh fact of death and birth as by the fluctuations of opinion—so does what it means to be a conservative.

On the contray, conservatives believe in a transcendent moral order populated by eternal truths to which they seek to conform human affairs. Jews, for example, recognize these in the Decalogue, Platonists in the Ideas and Hindus in dharma. Infractions committed against the eternal truths do not change the truths, the infractions change us, sometimes for the better but more often for the worse.

Like the sophists, David Frum has chosen the worse, peddling his opinions in a world composed of mere opinion, as changeable as a pair of pants.

That's not conservatism.

So how does Charlie Sheen withdraw up to $10 million to pay blackmail and not get prosecuted and Speaker Hastert does?

I'm callin' phony on this story:

"Sheen said he's trusted the diagnosis with people he thought he could confide in, but has paid out upwards of $10 million to keep the illness a secret."

Robert Kaplan either steals from Plato, or is simply ignorant of him

Here in "The Loneliness of the Tyrant", where he discourses at length on the psychological predicament of many strongmen past and present, but never once mentions Socrates' famous meditation on the soul of the tyrannical man:

"No one should envy a tyrant. His existence is miserable."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead a worse life than he whose life you determined to be the worst? ... 

He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the resemblance holds? ... 

Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.

-- Plato, Republic, Book 9

Self-Described Moderate Rep. Justin Amash To Receive Primary Challenge From Conservative

Grand Rapids businessman Brian Ellis is set to challenge Rep. Justin Amash in the Republican primary as a conservative because of Amash's idiosyncratically liberal voting record, as reported here:

Kevin Heine, chief strategist for iCaucus Michigan, said he's interested in hearing more of Ellis' platform. iCaucus is a Wyoming-based nonprofit that is "strategically allied" with the Tea Party, Heine said. "We saw this primary challenge coming because Congressman Amash's voting record is conspicuously sloppy on both military and veteran issues, as well as social issues," he said. "Neither of those play well in the 3rd District."

In April Rep. Amash famously described himself as a moderate in an interview with George Will when Amash was still flirting with the idea of running for Carl Levin's Senate seat:

He adds, “Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

--------------------------------------------

This may well be a battle of the businessmen, DeVos and company vs. Chamber of Commerce types, not of conservatism vs. libertarianism per se. Both are what we used to call "shop and till" conservatives, hands familiar with the feel of coins but which fumble with the pages of Plato, the Bible and Shakespeare. Ellis is an accounting major and finance MBA who at least has a history in the real world of making a go of it and raising a family. Amash is an economics major and lawyer who went straight into politics and controversy, heir to a fortune made by his father, not by himself. As a representative he has taken as many courageous stands as he has controversial ones, but remains a mixed bag of predictable aloofness which is always at risk in elections where emotion, not reason, often carries the day. In a region where people think of old trees as members of their family, the advantage goes to the candidate who can tap into that sap. Ellis' entry from the right is a good opener.  

Plato's Gold/Silver Ratio was 12, Founding Fathers' 15. At this hour it is 59.7!

Socrates

Now answer this further question: you say that if one acquires more than the amount one has spent, it is gain?

Friend

I do not mean, when it is evil, but if one gets more gold or silver than one has spent.

Socrates

Now, I am just going to ask you about that. Tell me,  if one spends half a pound of gold and gets double that weight in silver, has one got gain or loss?

Friend

Loss, I presume, Socrates for one's gold is reduced to twice, instead of twelve times, the value of silver.

Socrates

But you see, one has got more; or is double not more than half?

Friend

Not in worth, the one being silver and the other gold.

-- Plato's Hipparchus 231cd

Barry Ritholtz Is Against The World Religion Of Gold

Barry Ritholtz here recently had some fun with the goldbugs, whom he ridicules as devotees of a "religious cult".

The piece is regrettably inflammatory. Doesn't he know he's writing off the whole world as a bunch of religious kooks in this temper tantrum? That's pretty much what ideologues do when reality won't cooperate with their theories, but surely he must know that sovereigns and central banks the world over continue to build their hoardes of gold year upon year, now approaching 32,000 tonnes and 20% of all the stuff ever pulled out of the ground. That's quite the foundation for the edifice of the worldwide church of gold.

In fact, many of the central banks in particular have been on a tear recently, acquiring the stuff in quantities not seen in 30 years. Evidently they are to a man possessed by the Oracle of Au (pronounced "Ow"). But try as they may to acquire new gold reserves, no one of them yet even comes close to the chief priest bowing and scraping before the barbarous relic, namely the USA, the number one holder of gold in reserve to the tune of 8,134 tonnes (not to be confused with tons). 

That even the USA with all its fiat money still considers this gold to be the most sublime of all currencies can be seen in its own gold issues. Gold Eagles, in one ounce sizes down to tenth ounce, are denominated from $50 down to $5. It says so right on the coins. (I understand if you don't believe me because you haven't seen one. They are expensive these days.) I myself haven't seen one of these things in my change at Walmart recently, or anywhere else, but theoretically you could. In various places around the country they are in fact found in Salvation Army kettles from time to time, usually around the time of a holiday formerly known as "Christmas".

There is a reason for what appears on a Gold Eagle: The US government has decreed that gold is money, and that the price of gold cannot fall. It has fixed the price at $42.22 per troy ounce since 1973, and it hasn't fallen since. The one ounce $50 Gold Eagle thus closely approximates this valuation, as it should if America wants to maintain its credibility as the leader of the free world and the spokesman for truth, justice and the, well, American way. The excess, in case you were wondering, is simply a small bonus in exchange for providing the world with both its security and its reserve currency, both of which are quite costly to the inhabitants of the land of the free.

Over our long history, the price of gold has indeed risen despite the best efforts of "manipulators" to stop it from doing so. For a long time the price of gold had been ruthlessly kept down at $20.67, from the War Between the States to FDR, but suddenly became $35 when the greatest Democrat ever saved us from the bad old ways. Not to be outdone, however, the great Republican Richard Nixon managed to make gold higher still, at $42.22, where it has stood ever since.

See, the price of gold hasn't ever fallen in America, it's only risen, just like Jesus. It's God's will. It is our manifest destiny.

That said, more people these days do need to come to accept the reality of this defacto gold standard to which our benevolent government all too secretly adheres. Younger generations of mockers actually have arisen among us who need to repent of their intemperate outbursts against gold and believe in the Gold Gospel once again. Instead of denying the reality of this kingdom of gold, which is really present here and now in the sacramental dollar, they need to wake up and consider the future possibilities of our great civilization and its gold religion.

Perhaps then there would be more public support for all these central bankers who print funny money to drive gold prices higher, especially for our own Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve who far excells all others at this. What he really needs most right now is more public encouragement to use that funny money like our competitors do in the world. Like them, we need to start augmenting our gold reserves once again using funny dollars to buy gold just as they are doing using, say, funny yuans. After all, this is actually a divinely sanctioned practice, what the Bible calls making use of "unrighteous mammon". You can look it up, it's right in there. Ben really needs to get on this right away. It should be a matter of his monetary policy to drive up the price of gold by hoarding it. Who knows, maybe we can even get our tonnage back up where it used to be after WWII, around 20,000 tonnes, and just think, all it will cost us is some paper and ink.

Meanwhile gold continues to work for us in season and out of season, in good times and in bad. Our reserves have seen us through thick and thin, whether it's been the boom times under Reagan/Bush/Clinton or the misery index years of Jimmy Carter or the new depression years of Barack Obama. Our gold is still there, just like the flag. It hasn't rusted, shrunk in the rain, or even tarnished. Good as gold as they say. Things might be even better if we had more of it, but you've got to be thankful for your blessings, thankful for what you do have.

The truth is, even in the very worst of circumstances imaginable gold has performed miracles for people. A few well-placed gold coins not that long ago meant the difference between some of our fellow countrymen coming here or going to the gas chambers. Ask them and their progeny if escaping an apocalypse wasn't "just fine", even if they were penniless afterward.

No, the only suckers when it comes to gold have been those who let theirs go when misguided government came looking for it. Some of those babies confiscated in 1933 now fetch $300,000. The rest appreciated in value in their melted down form in the government's vault, but only 6600%. You could go to Harvard today with just 120 of those ounces. In the present banks and governments across the globe are finding the collateral gold provides rather more reliable than US Treasuries in a pinch, which is why they keep acquiring it. Evidently we haven't yet understood the message that this sends. 

It's true in a sense that gold is a rejection of government control, but only in the sense of its opposite, self-control, which is what in America is the unique basis of our form of government. It was an idea bequeathed to us by Protestantism, and also by Plato, both of which are unhappily out of favor. But seeking to control your own destiny, which is what many foreigners are doing by acquiring gold, is actually the sincerest form of flattery of what the United States used to stand for. Free from the control of a reserve currency, there's no telling what others in the world may accomplish without us. But under a universal currency, there's no telling what we could still accomplish together. 

The Tyrant Fears His Own: All His Life Long He Is Beset With Fear

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

Is Tim Pawlenty "The Unnatural"?

There's a certain metaphysical quality to the guy. And we're not talking Platonic philosophy.

The New Republic tries to explain, here.

Obama: If Only I Were President of China

So the president has let it slip that it would be so much easier to be the president of China.

To Michael Goodwin for The New York Post, here, this is evidence of how reality keeps intruding on the president, who protests too much that he is not an ideologue:

[M]y suspicion is that it's not the problems per se that have Obama envying a lower rung on the global ladder. It's that he regards them as endless distractions that keep getting in the way of his transformative agenda.


He is a man of the faculty lounge who wants a blank slate so he can remake the nation into a more perfect place, as he sees it. ...


But damn it, the country and the world won't cooperate.


Or as Socrates put it:

He who is the real tyrant . . . is the real slave . . .. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor . . . he ...  is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.

Spreading the Misery Around

Moreover, as we were saying before, [the tyrant] grows worse from having power:

he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first;

he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.


-- Socrates, Republic of Plato, Book IX

A Simple Illustration Of Why Healthcare Is Not A Right

Because, quite simply, it's a contract. And if the provider doesn't agree to make a contract with you, no healthcare is provided. As in this case of yet another doctor who puts up a warning notice to his patients:

“If you voted for Obamacare, be aware these doors will close before it goes into effect.” The note is signed Joseph M. Scherzer M.D. and includes the following addendum: “****Unless Congress or the Courts repeal the BILL.”

People who insist that healthcare is a right would enslave another human being to make him or her provide it. If they really mean it then they ought to take intellectually promising children away from their mothers and fathers at an early age and raise and educate them to this end, just as Plato discussed long ago.

Funny how it's the Democrat Party which is so enthusiastic for a new form of slavery. Didn't they have something to do with it the last time? That went well.

The Daily Caller has the story and a picture here.